Those searching for sunny economic news might look toward the Space Needle, since help truly is wanted in the Emerald City.

“We needed extra staff,” says Gerry Leonard, the general manager of Fado Irish Pub in Seattle. “We’ve already hired extra guys for the kitchen, extra guys for the front of the house.”

So does this indicate that the nation is turning the fiscal corner?

Not really.

It just means that plenty of people in Seattle like watching corner kicks. Seattle is a city in which support for Major League Soccer’s Sounders is as strong as — or stronger than — it is for Major League Baseball’s Mariners, with average crowds greater than 35,000 per match. And Fado’s is ranked the No. 1 soccer bar by the U.S. Soccer Federation.

So the World Cup is responsible for this job creation.

Soccer is the stimulus.

“We’re going to show every single game live,” Leonard says.

In that effort, Fado’s managers, cooks, bartenders and servers promise sleeplessness, virtually from the start of the World Cup’s month-long South Africa run. The tournament begins Friday, and Saturday, matches commence as early as 4:30 a.m. PT. Leonard will open the doors 15 minutes before that, seven hours earlier than usual. During most of the day, Leonard is expecting crowds close to the pub’s 400-person capacity, especially during the United States’ highly anticipated matchup with England (which starts at 11:30 a.m. PT). The pub will close at 2 a.m., as usual.

“Then it’s time to clean the place up, and start all over again,” Leonard says.

The expected bustle at Fado’s might suggest to some that soccer’s time, in this country, has finally come. The question, however, is whether the excitement in that one spot, in one soccer-crazed city, can spread down the coast and across the plains. The World Cup is always a huge event internationally. But how big can it be domestically, in the country the world watches to see if it’s watching?

Special feature Who’s who on the U.S. Stalwarts like Landon Donovan give Team USA familiar faces, but there are 15 guys playing in their first World Cup. The Associated Press

“My sense is that America is going to be very passionate about it,” says Alan Black, the Scotland-born co-author of the whimsical but reverential The Glorious World Cup: A Fanatic’s Guide. “Soccer has matured in this country over a period of 30 years. What’s interesting to me is that many American soccer fans have come to love the game through participating instead of through the media. This has created an understanding of the game. There’s a stealth wave that the traditional sports media have ignored.”

The sport does have many factors in his favor, perhaps more than ever before.

More than 4 million children in the U.S. are registered players. The U.S. is increasingly Hispanic, a portion of the population that tends to be passionate about the sport. MLS has been established for 15 years, and now includes 16 teams, many based in major cities such as Chicago, Washington D.C., Houston and Los Angeles.

ESPN, which has been bombarding viewers with World Cup promotion through commercials and on its signature show SportsCenter, will produce more than 250 hours of original programming and is presenting matches in high definition. The U.S. team has now qualified for six straight World Cups after missing the tournament for 40 years.

This year, the U.S. has a deep squad featuring players — Tim Howard, Landon Donovan, Clint Dempsey — who have fared well in international leagues and competition, and the team has been placed in a favorable group, with the toughest match likely to come in the opener, a highly-awaited contest against traditional historical rival England. And major U.S. figures, from Henry Kissinger to Bill Clinton to Brad Pitt, has all taken an active interest in the bid to host the 2018 World Cup.

So is soccer primed for an explosion in popularity in America?

“There is no comparison as to the support, the exposure, the fan base and the knowledge, eight years ago to where it is today,” says former U.S. captain John Harkes, an ESPN analyst. “It has grown tremendously. The core group of fans, but also the ones on the perimeter, are so interested as to how our team does. And the U.S. has done such a good job of growing the game the right way, and setting up resources for players, so they can be successful. My debut was May 23, 1987, and I can remember washing our own uniforms. Now look at the fields they have, the setup. (Coach) Bob Bradley has a great situation at Princeton.”

Harkes believes that the MLS’s existence and the U.S.’s consistent World Cup participation have provided a springboard, particularly with youth. “It was the most populated sport, but now it’s an educated sport,” Harkes says. “Kids are mimicking players across the entire MLS. Now they are starting to want to be the players that they see.”

That would be a major change. For years, kids have flocked to soccer fields in suburbs and cities, and even attended camps and clinics, in an effort to perfect their skills as strikers and stoppers. But that love of playing hasn’t generally translated into a genuine interest in watching, or dreaming. The best young athletes, even those with specific talents best suited for soccer, have been far more likely to idolize the likes of Alex Rodriguez, LeBron James or Peyton Manning. And soccer has struggled to capture the imagination of American sports spectators — and followers — in the same way as other team sports, particularly baseball, basketball and football.

So why the slow evolution?

David Henry Sterry, Black’s co-author, is the son of English immigrants. He grew up in Texas, playing fullback and rooting for the NASL’s Texas Tornadoes. “It was usually the long-haired freaky kids who played the game,” Sterry says. “The sport had a certain outsider quality that I loved.”